Indie Reviews: Richard Lee Announces Key Changes

Richard Lee

The HNS has revised the way we review Indies (self- or subsidy-published novels) to reflect the transformed nature of publishing.

In 1997, when the HNS began, self-publishing was seen as vanity publishing, and primarily a way for unscrupulous printers to take money from writers who had little or no route to market. Now, in 2017, even J. K. Rowling chooses self-publishing as one of her routes to market – so the world has changed.

The HNS has been ahead of this curve for much of these seismic 20 years. We reviewed Indies early, we have reviewed a lot of them, and we have never charged for reviews. Lately, though, we have fallen behind the curve, and so changes were needed.

The main issue was structural: Indies and traditionally-published books were reviewed by separate teams using different criteria, with a different submission guide and process, different reviewer guidelines and supervision, and these teams were independent of each other. This led to the following complaints (brackets for the reasons we were doing what we were doing):

Complaints from Indie authors –

Indie reviews were separated on our website and labelled as Indies (because we wanted to indicate that they had undergone a different editorial process);

Indie reviews were excluded from the print edition of the HNR irrespective of merit (initially for space reasons; latterly because of their different editorial process).

Complaints from traditionally-published authors –

Indies had their own HNS Indie Award that excluded traditionally-published authors, and there was no equivalent award for them (because we felt that there were other non-HNS awards for traditionally-published authors, but there were none specifically for Indie historical fiction);

Indies had an easier time getting to be Editors’ Choice because they were not competing against traditionally-published authors (mea culpa, this one happened without us really noticing).

What we have decided to do going forward is to bring the processes together, so –

Advertisement

Indie reviews will no longer be labelled as Indie, they’ll just be reviews;

Some Indie reviews will appear in the print edition of the HNR;

HNS Awards will no longer exclude any route to market;

Editors’ Choice will be not be differentiated by route to market.

That said, another thing has changed in the publishing landscape. The number of books being published and reissued is now enormous, and the HNS has more to review than we can possibly manage. We also have the gamut of quality to assess. This means that our editorial process has become more selective, because we cannot review everything, and it doesn’t benefit our readers to do so. Thus, our editorial team will decide in the first instance whether we request your book – Indie or traditional – for review. We will choose, like any knowledgeable reader, based on information provided to us by the publisher, author, and/or vendor. Then we will look carefully, we will read some of the text, and in some instances this will be a group decision – but we will only consider books that meet our high standards. And even if we do request the book to be sent for consideration, submission of a book to us does not guarantee a review.

From 2017 we will have a section in the print HNR for ‘Members’ New Books’ where we will list and outline members’ books that we know about. But please note that membership in the HNS is not relevant to our reviewing process. We do not sell reviews, and membership in the Society brings no entitlement to a review.

Sadly, there is one more thing. Some people have been abusive to our editors. Others feel that it is acceptable to harass our editors and readers – usually with ‘when can I expect my review?’ or ‘why will you not review my novel?’ This is something we do not tolerate, and our reviewing staff will not respond to such enquiries.

About the contributor: Richard Lee is the founder of the HNS, publisher of HNR, and Indies Review Editor.

RSS feeds are a way of keeping up with new content on the HNS website without having to keep checking back to see if we have added anything new. Using an RSS Reader (such as Google Reader) you will instantly see as soon as we add something new.